


In Days Past

by Lunalab



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Shingeki no Kyojin Fusion, Gen, Homophobia, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunalab/pseuds/Lunalab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The diary of Reiner Braun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Movement

**Author's Note:**

> Contains homophobia and homophobic slurs.

"Bert! Bertolt!"

"Reiner!"

"Bertolt! Please, Dad, stop!" I cry as loud as I can, my little arms and legs flailing, thrashing against this monolith from Hell as hard as I can to no avail. 

Bertolt's mother has him by the wrist. 

She caught us. We were so careful and she caught us. Pants around our ankles, dicks in each other's hands.

You should've seen the look on her face. Looking at me like I'm some monster, some devilish creature come to devour everything holy.  

Little me.

She yanks Bert by the wrist and  _THROWS_  him into her room. 

I am become death, destroyer of families.

Gloria Hoover, Woman of God. She growls at me. 

"Get out, you little faggot."

I do. As fast as I can, I pull up my jeans and pull up my belt while tripping over my own feet. I run down the stairs and out the door and I see it.

There was never any hope.

Father was already waiting in the driveway. 

 

It's been seven years. I'll always love Bertolt. I just wonder what happened. If they sent him to straight camp. If he's already dead.

That look on his face as my father, the biggest aberration of them all, drove away with me clawing at the window so hard my fingers bled.

My mother trying to exorcise me.

All the horrors of this world.

 

Bert.

I'll find you.

 

_Reiner Braun_


	2. Eyes Like Violet Candles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new kid at Holy Fire Trost High catches Reiner's eye.

I see him everywhere. His reflection in windows.

“I’ll find you.”

Ok.

There’s a new kid at school; Eren’s his name. Big emerald eyes, just beautiful. I try to look away but the tall, arched windows of this classroom bathe him in a pale, yellow light: hair short and messy, a golden amber with a messy red streak cutting through. Skinny black jeans and black fingernails.

Lost in a warm haze.

I look up and see him staring at me. Smirking.

My arm gives out from under me, my pen throttles spear-like into Armin’s eye and my forehead slams against the desk.

Smooth.

“Armin!” My heart races, pounding in my chest as I cup my forehead.

Nausea.

“Jesus!” He gets up, right hand pressing his right eye. “Reiner, I’m fine. Petra, can I go to the nurse?”

“Certainly. Reiner, how about you go with him?”

No question there.

“Yeah, of course.” I stumble out of my seat and guide Armin out the door, whipping my head around at the very last minute to see the new kid smiling at me with clever eyes. My heart skips. Could he-

BANG, my head hits a locker. The same spot.

“Goddammit!”

Armin chuckles.

“New kid got you in a bundle?”

My heart pounds, my steps shaky. I turn around.

Clear.

“A little.”

I take a deep breath and start laughing with him, back in my own body. Our steps echo on bright red-and-white checkered floors with some pediatrician’s office-style cerulean, jade and every-color-under-the-sun splashed all around. That style where they make it look like kids did it.

Kids didn’t do it.

Still, it’s nice. Nicer than the rest of this place.

We turn the corner and head into Prison, into the soapy scent of mold.

See, there’s a reason the beauty in Holy Fire Trost High always feels restrained. Slightly muted. Our town’s only public school recently underwent a sort of religious rebirth from the recent influx of liberal ideas. Freedom Trost High was renamed and joined in the shape of an L with the Methodist church a street over: a sort of communal baptism, pushed forward aggressively by local political groups no doubt puppeted by the clergy.

The infirmary is the gateway to what used to be the Saint’s Holy Fire Methodist Church: what we call Prison. Stained-glass windows abound through these iron corridors, letting in diffuse light of all shades only to fall flat on old, rotten milk-stained hardwood doors and cabinets and onyx handles and knobs.

What they call the infirmary is a closet with two twin beds jammed up against one another with frames so decayed you can pull the rust off in flakes, a shifty metal sink, some well-worn, vomit-green cabinets, a few creaky wooden chairs scattered about, and an old, greying nurse in the center.

A sterilization of chaos. An aura of...not necessarily of death, but of the absence of life.

I don’t much care for it.

Armin turns to me, cocking his head.

“Hold still,” the nurse barks.

_You’re overthinking this._

I shift my weight, the chair squeaking.

_I’m not._

She shines a penlight at his left eye, his right still locked on me, glowing like a violet ember.

 


End file.
